A significant portion of President Trump’s Twitter followers appear to be fake accounts and bots, according to Twitter Audit, an online tool that assesses the authenticity of followers on the platform.
Vocativ reported the false following after a since-deleted viral tweet accused the president of gaining an exorbitant amount of followers over Memorial Day weekend.
This claim has since been debunked by Buzzfeed; the outlet also reported that Trump isn’t the only politician experiencing an influx of bots. High-profile Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton also have many new followers that appear to be fake.
While it can be hard to tell which accounts are legitimate or not, fake profiles can usually be spotted because the user has not uploaded a photo or tweeted at all from that account.
Still, it’s important to recognize that some create Twitter accounts just to follow other users, not to tweet at them, and it’s also possible to purchase Twitter followers for accounts that you yourself do not own.
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